Dear Editor:

Recently, Public Citizen News’ front-page headline, “Trial Endangers Patients and Medical Residents,” created a connector to Riverview nurses working under similar conditions that placed patients and nurses at risk. Medical Residents, aka, Interns, were being forced to work shifts of 28 or more consecutive hours – another name for mandatory work hours. A similar study, “Staff Nurse Fatigue and Patient Safety Study,” also recorded “conditions that placed patients and nurses at risk.”

Sufficient evidence exists indicating patient suffering when medical staff is working under sleep deprivation conditions generated by management’s mandatory work requirements. Patient risks include needle-stick injuries, exposure to blood-borne pathogens, depression and auto accidents on the way home. Some of the nurse testimony indicated that some of the mandatory hours may be stretching state law – Title 26, §603. LIMITS ON MANDATORY OVERTIME . . . 5.  — Any nurse who is mandated to work more than 12 consecutive hours, as permitted by this section, must be allowed at least 10 consecutive hours of off-duty time immediately following the worked overtime.

Rightfully we are losing nurses at Riverview as they seek safer work conditions. We have known since 2013 that we had both inadequate staff and inappropriate treatment policies. In 2016, inadequate staff numbers remain, so we continue to place staff and patients at risk as we mandate excessive overtime hours. After two years of “hiring and losing” qualified nursing staff, maybe it is time to look at ourselves to find better personnel practices that can generate more nurses to apply and to stay for the long haul. Sometimes it takes out-of-the-box thinking when management is mired in the muck.

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb